I was on TikTok the other night, and I came across a quote that made me so happy. It reads, “Happiness is not the absence of problems, it’s the ability to deal with them.” Steve Maraboli. I’m not quite sure who Steve is, but it got me thinking about my life and my dog walking business, and how I have learned to deal with problems because I used to get all stressed out and freaked out when a sitter would mess up, or I would mess up, or a customer leave a bad review.

But as I’ve learned, and as the business has grown, all of these problems have only created a better business and helped me grow as a human being.

I want to talk about the two reasons why problems need to be celebrated.

Problems reveal the ways that your business can grow.

They are showing you something. For example, you have more customers than team members. Awesome. You need to find more pet sitters and build better hiring systems. This means that you’re growing. That’s a good thing.

Two, you get a bad customer complaint posted on the internet, posted on Google My Business, posted on Yelp. Awesome. Now you can drive your team to serve your customers more effectively. At the same time, you build your marketing to counter the effect of the complaint and systemize how you will deal with any negative reviews that pop up because they’re going to happen. And that is okay. But guess what? The problem occurred and now you’ve created this new system. Good. It means you’re growing.

Lastly, you have an employee that isn’t working out. Awesome. Now you have a better understanding of the type of people you want to work with. And you’re going to create an attraction system on where to find these people. This is a good thing, and this is how you’re going to grow a better team.

You are building a better dog walking business.

Every problem is like a cleanse for your business. It just takes you to the next level. You will have to solve every problem that you face and then come up with a system to avoid having the same problem happen again in the future.

This is what I’ve done over 20 years of my career in the pet sitting industry. I didn’t know what I was doing when problems first happened. Now, everything is systematized to a T, and my team and my managers know how to deal with everything in a great, systematized way. It just takes all the stress off.

I’m not saying I’m without problems. I have a business and I’m dealing with human beings. Problems still arise, but now I’ve grown as a leader. I’ve grown as a business owner that I don’t freak out when these things happen. I try to look at it through the lens of this happening for me and not to me, and it will create an even better business.